When an answer to an enquiry is not accepted or disputed, the onus is on the enquirer to open his or her hand and divulge the proofs.
For seven months and approaching eight, Tun Dr Mahathir has been making his allegations in the form of answer-seeking questions. His response to the answers is to doubt it, and change goalposts with new enquiries arising from the answers.
By right, he is supposed to divulge his proofs. When that failed, then one resigned to God's judgement as RPK wrote here to correct Ummi Hafilda,
If Tun M has all the proofs as one officer bearer of Perkasa and a pentaksub claimed, why is he not divulging his proofs with the next Parliament seating around the corner?
The pentaksub claimed some 8 government and intelligent-related agencies cc-ed a report on 1MDB to Tun M.
The same question was posed to a former officer to a recently removed Minister.
Why not reveal it and get it over with? If the proofs is convincing and not just the simplistic conclusions from common man's logic, no red demonstration can save Najib. Why waste time?
His reply was Tun M does not have it. If so, it is just propaganda or psychological warfare meant to bring Dato Najib down?
Goebbel's propaganda is to tell a lie big enough that public will end up believing. The public focus has diverted from the real problems of 1MDB to unproven allegations.
The public seemed to conclude that money was channeled into Najib's personal account though there are doubts on the documents revealed by WSJ. All because Najib's statement had indirectly admitted by claiming not benefiting personally.
However, in a court of law, he can still get away and not taken as admitting.
Agenda setting
Tun M had repeatedly commented the money is from 1MDB and not from an Arab donor. That is another Goebbel's technique to repeat till it sink in the public psyche. But it is no proof.
Propaganda is a technique in communication to influence the attitude of a segment of people. It gives out one sided information to appeal to the emotion and not so much a rational response to the information to achieve a set agenda.
Till today, Tun M's agenda is unclear.
In the session with bloggers, he was concerned with Sirul's death sentence, BR1M, GST and 1MDB. When posed with a question, only did he raised concern on Malay issues. His latest posting here did not raised it. So it is not so much about the usual alif ba ta.
The issue of BR1M is not raised again. It indicate he will not touch unpopular issues. It does not serve the agenda set to bring Najib down. Still the question why?
Tun M did say that the Chinese will return to vote should Najib stop his policies. He was upset of being told by Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing that Najib is ending his "legacies".
Since the Sirul death sentence issue is just a shock and awe propaganda technique which is legally non-sensical, Tun M's concerned legacy is IPP. It means his main grouse is GST and 1MDB.
GST is not a bad tax policy. It is good, fair tax system and widely practise around the world. Tun M studied it, Pak Lah explored and Najib brave enough to implement.
It is believed the Chinese person against it and have been lobbying Najib to not proceed was Tan Sri Vincent Tan. Someone with link to the unsavory side and loves retailing and franchising business would hate GST for one and only reason. Laundered money get GST-ed!
Thus the raison d'etre is left to be only 1MDB. So 1MDB and legacy only points to Tan Sri Francis Yeoh and YTL.
When asked for an offer for his IPP, Francis Yeoh offered a ridiculous no-can-do price. It was believed he said he would rather burn down his IPP than sell it to government.
Francis Yeoh may not be associated with Tun M since he is opposition friendly with Tony Pua as his defender. A source in a law enforcement outfit claimed he paid Rafizi millions into a foreign account to raise issue on 1MDB.
Propaganda
If the agenda to remove Najib is unclear, the propaganda technique is clear. Goebbel wrote, "Propaganda has nothing to do with the truth."
1MDB issue could not gain any transaction with the public till Tun M picked it up. That is exploiting the power distance culture prevailing in Malaysia.
A study shows Malaysia has the highest power distance [read The Star here]. The very reason Datoship is much sought after.
The cultural psychological phenomenon of Dunning-Kruger effect and false dichotomy is prevalent in Malaysia to enable the exploitation of public's factual deficiency and ignorance.
Tun M's latest posting was filled with propaganda. Tun keeps his story simple but is filled with cherry picking of simplified and incomplete information without the desired evidences.
People say Tun M is a good communicator because he can relate to the common people. That is a propaganda technique called plain folks or common man approach to appear like a common man and win their trust.
It sounded odd to associate Najib's hiring of foreign advisers and consultants with "development of Malaysia has slowed down and the races are at each others throats." It's half truth and exaggeration to issues of wastage, excessive payment and no confidence with local.
The allegations on 1MDB is exyensively applied lies and deceptions techniques. Tun M repeated accusations of money dissappearing under audited accounts, Petrosaudi investment rechannelled, and Goldman Sachs. All was corrected by Arul Kanda.
He applied demonising the enemy approach to label Najib as colonised, unpopular, wasteful, etc.
There was low blow personal attack to do character assassination of family member. The same manner used on the late Tunku Abdul Rahman to call him as having Siamese blood.
Fear, uncertainty and doubt was widely applied too.
Big lie
In the posting, the big lie was applied to simplify the USD1.7 billion investment with Petrosaudi as disappeared. It is similar to the Iraq's WMD lie by President George W Bush to justify a war against Iraq.
The posting on Al Jazeera and repeated again in the posting was another application of the big lie.
Tun M insisted on repeating the big lie on the RM42 billion that turned many off. The number changed many times with the latest being more than RM20 billion. It's as though accounts are not audited.
He stopped saying land price in KL is RM7,000 psf but RM3,000 psf.
Will he not make issue and hurl accusation to 1MDB's extenstion on it's audited dateline for March 30th account? He will ignore the dificulty of doing an audit with documents seized by various investigators?
There is the suspicion that Tun M was behind the various big lie done by Rupert Murdoch's WSJ and NYT and other foreign media on so-called foreign account freeze and investigation [read Arul Kanda here], including Al-Jazeera's spin on Altantunya murder [read Tun M here].
His allegations are in-sync with Sarawak Report, The Edge, Clare Rewcastle, Tony Pua, Rafizi, pro-opposition and foreign media, and off course, Matthias Chang's blog postings.
Thus, the suspicion there is a collaboration involving all these parties.
There is proof thus Tony Pua and The Edge are feeling the heat, claimed RPK. Tun M too is pre-empting of SOSMA on himself and claiming it is worse than ISA.
Najib's weakness
On the other hand, Najib is not talking enough. Conspiracy is Najib's only rebutting story.
Najib side failed to give an effective reply to Tun M's powerful story. The truth is difficult to tell. It is the story that is important.
It is made difficult by Najib's public statements seemed to be doing obfuscation or intentional vagueness.
And, his problem of trust deficit arise because he is seen as halting investigation. Thus losing the moral ground. MACC's latest statement here will not be helpful to Najib's perception.
Remark like the one yesterday by Ramesh Rao to claim Tun M needs mental treatment does not help Najib's cause but that of Tun M's.
Many may not agree that Tun M is not telling the truth but hopefully they begin to realise that the man is merely doing political propaganda.
If that is the case, he is not serious in revealing the proofs. More so, it is an outright lie to claim he has no more outlet than to attend Bersih 4.0.
Public must demand on Tun M to come out with his evidences. Najib too has to come out with it and come clean.
The country cannot be held back by the political power game of a leader and a past leader again and again.
